Ursula Wagner is a textile designer, artist and researcher from Germany. In her work she explores the interplay between material, technology and aesthetics, with a focus on sculptural and three-dimensional aspects of textile construction. While specializing in industrial weaving, Ursula Wagner's projects mainly involve an intersection between the textile field and other disciplines. She designs dynamic, three-dimensional fabrics and site-specific installation artwork for public and private interiors while exploring the potential and extending the limits of digital tools in the domain of textile creation and production.
Ursula Wagner studied Textile & Surface Design at Weissensee Academy of Art Berlin (KHB) and Hiroshima City University in Japan, and received a Diplom (equivalent to an MFA) from KHB. She has been teaching in the Textile and Surface Design Department of KHB, the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, Germany and Shenzhen Polytechnic in China. As a research fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts, Ursula Wagner was engaged in a research project about smart homes, where she developed electronic and interactive textiles with several partners from industry, universities and research institutes. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. From 2017-2019 she held a full-time faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Textiles and New Technologies in the Textiles Department of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), USA. She has lived and worked in Berlin and abroad for about two decades before moving back to the Bavarian Alps where she was born and raised. She now lives in Murnau am Staffelsee.
In the recent years, Ursula Wagner worked with Italian weaving mills in Como, designed and produced custom-made fabrics for the fashion label PerretSchaad and collaborated with TheGreenEyl on a large-scale textile art installation for museum Grimmwelt in Kassel, Germany. From 2020-2023 she was the project manager for research and development at the German textile mill Rohi Stoffe GmbH.
Ursula Wagner was awarded several grants and prizes including the Mart-Stam-Prize, the Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship (NaFöG) of the Berlin State, a DesignFarmBerlin grant, a research grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for her studies in Japan and the Task Force Textiles working scholarhip. In 2012 she was selected to participate in the European Textile Trainee Programme of the TextielMuseum in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Her artworks have been acquired by private and public collections, such as Grimmwelt Kassel, Germany, TextielMuseum Tilburg, Netherlands and Die Neue Sammlung at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany with funding from PIN. Young Circle.
Photo: Luise Illigen